


As She Rages or Stills

by TheWaffleBat



Series: Home From All The Ports [8]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Brasidas lives, Dad!Nikolaos, Dysfunctional Family, Family Drama, Family Issues, Father-Daughter Relationship, For a character this bland and devoid of personality I've got a lot of fucking loathing for her, Gen, Nikolaos deserved better, Whoo buddy do I hate this fucking woman, fuck Myrrine 2K19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-06 17:50:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17944322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWaffleBat/pseuds/TheWaffleBat
Summary: “She doesn’tseethat Deimos isn't coping! ThatI'mnot! Itold her, Nikolaos - Barnabas and Herodotus have been more of a parent to me than she has ever been! Inallthese months she refuses to think that I might need help, that Pythagoras was amalakaand Barnabas and Herodotus are the only fathers I will have!No,” Kassandra growled, stabbing her dagger through the leather and ripping through. “No, Pythagoras is myblood, andof courseblood is more important than how I feel!”Nikolaos isn't the best dad - there's no way to come back from throwing his children off of mount Taygetos - but he sees the problems that Myrrine refuses to, and Kassandra needs that a lot more than she needs the illusion of family.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Rudyard Kipling's _The Sea And The Hills._

Kassandra didn’t know how Nikolaos managed to join her up on the mast’s crossbeam holding the sail. She didn’t care - picked loose the studs of an ancient leather cuirass with her even older dagger, levering them out by the tip enough for her to grab them and pull them loose. Her fingers hurt, rubbed raw and worn even through the tough calluses on her hand and  _good_ , it was a better pain than the anger dull behind her eyes, loud in the echoing  _THUD THUD THUD_ of her heart against her ribs.

She only had three studs for the effort, blinking silvery in her lap, when Nikolaos heaved himself up with a grunt and sat beside her, rubbing his shoulders but silent, watching her work.

Let him, she thought savagely, wrinkling her nose like her wolf’s snarl at her cuirass. What did it matter if he watched, if he didn’t, if he fucked off back to his travels? He’d stood with her against Myrrine, true - warning her off the path she was going down - but Kassandra was annoyed, and angry, and it wasn’t at him but he was nearby and she stabbed her dagger through the leather,  _wanting_ a fight and  _wanting_ to fuck off to the nearest cultist to stab him until he was dead and then following the threads his blood showed to kill the entire fucking branch of the fuck awful tree he was growing from and  _fuck_!

Above them the sky rumbled, and in her head Kassandra swore at the sky, too - angry at the darkening clouds, the rain starting to splatter down wet and cold. The Adrestia bobbed restlessly, a slow heave as the tides started to rage, Poseidon getting angry right alongside her and she cursed him too, because if his anger turned to fury then he’d cause a fuckload more problems than there needed to be, tangled ropes and sails torn loose and the wet aggravating Barnabas’ cough.

Another stud popped loose, clattering to the small pile in her lap. “Well,” Said Nikolaos, calmly.

“Well  _what_?”

Nikolaos was watching Myrrine stalk across the dock, pacing from stern to prow and when the beating of her feet became too rhythmic and grating she went to the docks and started pacing there - caring about as much for the rain as Kassandra and Nikolaos did. Kassandra started in on another stud, tried to drown out Nikolaos placid by her side the same way she drowned out everything else on the Adrestia, listening to the rain hitting her hood, the deck, the water.

He sighed, slow and heavy; leaned his elbow on his knee and held tight to the sturdy beam, as wobbly as Kassandra wasn’t. “I remember when you were born,” He said. “In my house, my bed. Such a tiny little thing you were, but such a voice! You howled like a whole pack of wolves, all on your own!” Nikolaos smiled at the memory, flicking rainwater from his fingers and tucking his arm close, wrapped around his belly. “You may not be my blood daughter, Kassandra, but you  _are_ mine - I have loved you since you were my little pup in Sparta and I love you now when you stood there a she-wolf all your own against your mother.”

Another stud popped loose, and Kassandra tore it out, snarling down at it. “If you tell me I was  _wrong_ I will stab you and throw your body to the sharks as I should have done in Megaris!”

“Wrong?” Said Nikolaos, bemused. “No. You were not wrong. Myrrine... doesn't know how to make us a family again. She has spent so long dreaming about her perfect little world where we are all happy in Sparta that I think she has forgotten how to live outside it. She doesn't know how to make you and Deimos her children again because she doesn’t understand that you’ve both  _changed_  in the years between mount Taygetos and now - that you’ve grown up without her there to guide you. You both have become… something else, I think, than she was expecting you to become. You are my pup, Kassandra,” He said, “But you are not a wolf, not all the time.  _Sometimes_  you are, and sometimes you are the Adrestia’s kitten, and mostly you are an eagle. Myrrine is only willing to see the wolf in you - the pup is all she remembers.”

Below them Myrrine stalked back to the deck. Her feet beat out a sharp rhythm against the planks for the long while Nikolaos stayed silent, turning to watch the clouds black and heavy overhead, still tipping it down with water. She stopped, once; drifted close to the mast like she was going to climb up to join them, but wisely turned away when Kassandra’s wolf snarled at her, trusting her master not to reprimand her for it because she was clever enough to know that Kassandra was utterly,  _unspeakably_ furious with Myrrine at the moment.

Kassandra shoved the studs into a small pouch on her hip, dropped the cuirass to the floor far below because she couldn’t find another one on it and delighted in the way Myrrine jumped at the wet slap of it hitting the deck. Picked up another old cuirass at her side, something in her gut viciously, savagely happy with each one she picked loose; trying to tear the pauldrons off and she knew it was futile, she just wanted to do it because otherwise it was leaping to the ground and punching Myrrine in the lying fucking mouth and that wasn’t exactly  _the done thing_ when families argued.

Well, Kassandra snarled at herself; what would she know about that? She’d never  _had_ a family before, only ever had Markos who was mostly drunk and in trouble, for all that he did genuinely care about her, and Phoibe who was  _hers_ , a tiny chick nesting on the walls of her heart that was  _hers_ to protect,  _hers_ to love, and look what happened to her?

“That doesn’t,” Kassandra said finally, “Give her the  _right_ to be angry with me when I tell her that she’s ignoring the problem.”

Because there was always the problem! Under everything they did! Like a massive, gaping hole in someone’s chest, only the person was up and walking around just fine, pretending there was no heart beating inside the chest of blown open ribs and unmoving, rotting lungs. It was a problem like a lion at the dinner table was a problem; obvious and dangerous and ignored because it wasn’t a threat  _now_ but could very easily become one if they looked it in the eye too long and she wasn't  _willing_  to let any of them stab it because it would get blood on the table!

Nikolaos nodded, slow not because he didn’t agree but because he was thinking. Said, “No, it doesn’t. Kassandra-” He took her hand, stopped her accidentally wearing herself to the bone on the studs and her dagger she was using to pick them out, “-trust me when I say that I agree with you. Myrrine has always ignored the problems, because for her it has always been easier to pretend. If it is not something she can beat with her blade, it is not something she is willing to see. You are not like her; you see the problem and you tackle it, because you know that otherwise it will fester and get worse and will reach the point where it’s beyond your ability to fix. You’re  _right_  to be angry, I swear to you that you are.”

“And yet she  _insists_ on pretending everything’s fine!” Kassandra said, gritting her teeth even though Myrrine wasn’t there to see and wouldn’t listen even if she was, turning away from Kassandra telling her it was all falling apart to stare at her dinner and eat, joylessly, because no time was good to  _talk_ about things and dinner time doubly so. “She doesn’t  _see_ that Deimos isn't coping! That  _I'm_ not! I  _told her_ , Nikolaos - Barnabas and Herodotus have been more of a parent to me than she has ever been! In  _all_ these months she refuses to think that I might need help, that Pythagoras was a  _malaka_ and Barnabas and Herodotus are the only fathers I will have!  _No_ ,” Kassandra growled, stabbing her dagger through the leather and  _ripping_ through. “No, Pythagoras is my  _blood_ , and  _of course_ blood is more important than how I feel!”

Thunder rolled across the water.

"And  _Deimos_ ," Kassandra snarled, "She refuses to see that he doesn't know how to handle love! That he needs her to be a stranger before she is a mother because love has always been used to hurt him. He's  _told_  her, Nikolaos; he's  _told_  her that he cannot bring himself to trust her the way she is because he doesn't know, he doesn't  _understand._  He needs  _help_  and yet she won't meet him halfway, give him the space that I give him! How is it that  _I_  can see that he needs to come to us on his own when  _she,_ his _mother,_  doesn't?"

Nikolaos watched her, a little sadly. Took her hand and when she didn’t throw him off, stilling beneath his grip, he shifted closer, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. He didn’t pull her into a hug, didn’t force her into it; like Barnabas and Herodotus didn't, lifting the corners of their blankets as an offer but not upset when all she wanted to do was sit nearby, not curl up against their backs to take comfort from the warmth bleeding through their tunics. She leaned against him, put her head to his shoulder then turned into the hug because  _gods_ , how pathetic was her family that the only ones who really, truly cared for her beyond the illusion of it that Myrrine put on was two old men who’d happened to adopt her and the man to throw her off a mountain?

“What can I say, Kassandra?” Said Nikolaos, smoothing his hand down her arm and squeezing her close. “Your mother is… difficult. She’s trying to be the woman I once knew, but the woman I once knew is, I suspect, as fake as this one is. She believes more in the idea of family than family itself; she won’t see that sometimes family is three old men, a mother, two sons, a daughter, and the daughter’s wolf and eagle.”

“And there’s nothing to be done to change it. She’ll always pretend we are one happy family, when we’re not.”

“No,” Nikolaos agreed, and the rain came down even harder. “There’s nothing to be done.”


	2. Chapter 2

They watched the storm roll in together, but it was only when it broke overhead, starting to whip up from dull anger into true fury, did Nikolaos came down with her from the top of the mast long after everyone else had gone to bed. Kassandra’s wolf was still loyally sat on deck, waiting for her and nosing her hand for a pet, and the rain still drummed down from the sky, but otherwise the Adrestia was quiet. She said nothing as they retreated below, quietly stepping over the sleeping crew; changed from wet clothes to dry, an old tunic she'd stolen from Nikolaos and the soft leggins Barnabas had bought her, not matching but comfortable and comfortable was what she needed.

But she wasn't ready for sleep just yet, would only lie there and stare at the wall, counting knots in the grain, so she found a seat and, as equally quiet as she was, Nikolaos joined her on the crate of supplies, tapping his fingers against the wood quick and loud as the rain, warm against her side.

The wolf put her head on Kassandra’s knee, whining softly but otherwise passive as Kassandra wrung her hands through the damp fur, restless and not quite knowing _why_. Took an old woolen tunic more rag than tunic and started drying her, towelling her roughly because Kassandra needed the distraction, needed _something_ and she didn’t know what it was and it _bothered her_ that she didn’t know what she needed.

Her chest rang hollow, as empty as Atlantis waiting for her far away on Thera.

Around them the Adrestia groaned, heaving as the tides heaved, and something in her wanted to go back out, back up on deck and just sit in the cold and the wet because the rain hitting her skull was a better feeling than just sat here next to Nikolaos, Myrrine a mother who couldn’t see past the pictures inside her own head long enough to know that she was lucky to have Kassandra and Deimos and Stentor at all sleeping soundly far across from them. A mother who couldn’t see that maybe Deimos being Deimos, not Alexios, wasn’t such a bad thing when he was tangled up with Brasidas, pressed flat to the curve of his back and twitching for his sword in his restless dreams; calmer, always calmer, when he shared a bed with his lover. That Kassandra, trying to find someone she could love in Odessa and Roxanna and Lykaon and Thiya, wasn’t unhappy with only Ikaros and her wolf to sleep on her feet and head after all. That Stentor was an ass who deserved the scar Kassandra had given him, but was still another brother added to the pile, pulling his weight whenever Kassandra sent the Adrestia cleaving through pirate’s ships.

They were  _happy_ , all of them! The beat of Poseidon's seas thundered in Kassandra's heart, and Deimos enjoyed the sea battles, and Stentor was coming into himself, learning to love the sea and the violence and the freedom, still missing the army but not so keenly with Kassandra at the helm. Nikolaos would never be forgiven - not for what he'd done - but Kassandra liked having him around, liked him sparring with her and Deimos in the mornings and looking at her in the evenings, quiet and sad from old regrets but smiling a little whenever Barnabas threw his arms around her and drunkenly started shouting praises for his adopted daughter.

But no, she groused to herself, cupping her wolf’s cheeks and giving her a fond squish. No, that wasn’t good enough. Myrrine wanted a doting son who could sleep through the night every night and a daughter with a soldier husband who would give her a grandchild and another son who looked to her the way he looked to Nikolaos, Brasidas only a friend and Barnabas and Herodotus no more than Kassandra’s beloved crew. “Everything is a mess,” She told her wolf, smoothing back the soft ears and scratching through the soft fur smooth on her skull. Quiet, though - Barnabas found it difficult enough to get to sleep as he struggled through the trailing ends of his illness, she didn’t need to make it worse by waking him in the middle of the night.

Nikolaos offered the wolf his hand, was allowed to pet too. “It is,” He agreed; paused a little, wavering a bit as he thought. “You could send her back to Lakonia.”

“After all this time trying to _find_ her?” She said, trying for levity. She didn’t know why - she didn’t do jokes and making light of things. Maybe just because her wolf didn’t deserve seeing her so unhappy, nosing her cheek with a soft whine and licking her jaw because she _did_ see, and wolves didn't know how to make it better.

“Kassandra,” Nikolaos murmured, with a frown that said she should leave levity to Barnabas, she wasn’t any good at it. “Myrrine is making things difficult, for all of us. She thinks she and I are the same people we were in Sparta, before the cult interfered and the delphi took us to mount Taygetos, but we aren’t. I have tried to change since then - I couldn’t live with myself if I _hadn’t_ changed from the fool who threw you away - but she has only ever been trying to go back. She ignores Barnabas and Herodotus even though they are the captains in your stead when you need them to be, she is doing more harm than good for Deimos, and Stentor… Well, you know him. He struggles to know who he is at the best of times - Myrrine is only making it worse.”

He scratched through the wolf’s fur, gently rubbing one velvety ear for a moment and giving up when she showed her teeth a little to rub his knuckles along her cheek, smiling when she closed her eyes and leaned into it, though it died quickly. Nikolaos sighed. “I think it might be best for her to spend time away from us. To stay in Sparta a while.”

“She’s my _mother_ , Nikolaos - I won’t just abandon her.”

“And I’m not asking you to,” He said, dropping his hand to her wrist and gently rubbing his thumb along the bones. “There is a difference between leaving her and spending time apart. I won’t tell you what to do - you are the captain of the Adrestia, no one else, and whatever right I had to boss you around I lost that night I nearly killed you. But you are _unhappy_ with her here; Herodotus hasn’t told you, because he doesn’t want you upset, but we can all see how you struggle, how you go to him for your problems even though he can’t fix them.” Nikolaos took her hand in a strong grip, head ducked low to catch her gaze, earnest and honest and _caring_ , gods. “And Deimos, Kassandra. He cannot stand up to her on his own, not after what you’ve told me about Chrysis.”

Kassandra looked away, turned her shoulder to him because _damn him_ , he knew the buttons to push; knew that after so long hunting the Sages, turning to him when he hunted her down and demanded she pay for their lives in blood, talking him down from the fight he wanted - using kindness against him the way he wanted her to use her blades. After so long earning his trust, showing him all the deepest wounds on her soul, the loneliness and difficulty and pain of a childhood on Kephallonia’s streets, long nights of hunger and nights longer still of sending Ikaros out hunting, using his eyes to find even the smallest fish or mouse to badly cook over a tiny fire, because badly cooked mice was better than an empty belly. Markos doing his best but having no idea how to take care of her, giving her jobs to do but jobs she had to learn to do by trial and painful, bloody error. After all that, she _cared_ for Deimos, loved him as much as he would allow her to love him, and more besides.

 _Gods_ , but she cared for Myrrine too! Remembered too clearly bitterly cold nights in empty, abandoned houses wanting Myrrine to carry her to a proper bed and tuck her in, little Alexios hungry or upset and waking them all up with his wailing but both of them _loved_. She knew she shouldn’t care - Myrrine was unknown now, a strange mix of someone Kassandra remembered loving so much but had no more between them than she did a random man on the street _now_. Myrrine was just some abstract thing, a desperate yawning pit in her heart grabbing tight to the idea of her just as Myrrine’s grabbed tight to the idea of their family.

She pressed her head to her wolf’s, wanted to drown everything inside her head out just a moment, just to stop the noise of blood in her ears and shouting inside her skull long enough to be a mercenary again, talking to herself the way she would a woman in her place that she didn’t know, was just helping for the drachmae.

Nikolaos was right. They all needed time apart. Kassandra and Nikolaos and Deimos and Stentor would do best on the Adrestia, out at sea, because none of them really knew how to stay at home. Myrrine would do well in Sparta, learning again to keep a house tidy, visiting the market and making friends again with the women she’d been friends with before. The Adrestia stopping at the port whenever they were nearby for a day or so at home and then back out on the water, chasing Poseidon’s storms because Kassandra had learned to love his towering waves and the rolls of thunder punching through her chest. To let Myrrine live in the illusion without straining anything by having that illusion the only thing any of them could ever live, and to let Kassandra and Nikolaos and Stentor grow close on their own, learning to love and letting it happen as slow as it liked because it would always be slow, always be scarred, but it would be _there_.

She pushed her wolf away, stood to go to her own bed. Grit her teeth because she didn’t _want_ to do it, it was just the best thing for all of them. “We turn to Attika in the morning - I won't risk losing the cultist - and we drop her off there.”

**Author's Note:**

> I really, genuinely fucking hate Myrrine. But Nikolaos is great - there's something very satisfying about thinking about him being Kassandra's dad again after spending years making up for his mistakes and maybe he doesn't ever be _pater_ again, but I like to think Kassandra does still love him. I've got a soft spot for redemption and gruff old dads doing their best (see: this entire series and anything I've written with Daud in it) but Nikolaos could have been a really good look at the dichotomy between parental instincts and ingrained belief and trust in the cultural norms of Sparta.
> 
> I mean sure, Myrrine went through something very traumatic - she thought she lost both her kids - and suffered _a lot_ because of it. But she comes off as very flat, unsympathetic, and delusional, and you know what? That's a lot more interesting than her in-game character where that's never actually explored, everything's just bright and happy because Family™.


End file.
